PLEASE CROSSPOST WIDELY TO ALL GROUPS NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL INCLUDING ALL ANTI-GREYHOUND RACING CAMPAIGNERS WORLDWIDE/WEBSITES/ FACEBOOK AND YOUR MYSPACE FOR MAXIMUM PUBLICITY
YOUR CHANCE TO BE A GLOBAL VOICE FOR THE GREYHOUNDS- PLEASE TAKE ACTION NOW TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE- YOUR VOICE FOR THEM IS VITAL!!!
DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) is running a consultation on greyhound racing. Current proposals are woefully inadequate and do nothing to tackle the main causes of greyhound suffering. This is your chance to help stop the cruelty.
The 'Racing Dog Protection Act' group (RDPA) http://www.rdpa. org.uk/ here in the UK are asking people who deeply care about animals to please help them be a voice for the plight of the racing greyhound here in the UK.
Please read the very important info below which could help to change history for the plight of the racing greyhound. Please take action today by going on to the RDPA website (link as above) and sending a message to Peter Hall at 'DEFRA'. Also please sign the petition on the website, contact your MP and write to the League Against Cruel Sports to ask them to support this act. Please also consider adopting a greyhound, they make wonderful companions. All details for this can be found on the left hand side of the RDPA web page.
This is our one chance to make a difference now, so please use it, therefore we are asking all our international supporters to also take part in this campaign. Please forward this vital appeal to all your contacts for maximum publicity. THANK YOU.
Never before has there been so much media attention as there has been recently on the subject of the plight of the racing greyhound. There is more than enough proof now, particularly more recently with the many greyhound deaths, mutilations, injuries etc that have occurred here in the UK and Ireland that we have been reporting to our supporters.
This clearly demonstrates that the only way to end this massive needless suffering of sentient beings is to ban this so called sport.
Many thanks for your support
Greyhound Crusaders/SWAP team UK
'Pioneers for change'
"The future depends on what we do in the present". - Mahatma Gandhi
Taken from RDPA (Racing Dog Protection Act) website
DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) is running a consultation on greyhound racing. Current proposals are woefully inadequate and do nothing to tackle the main causes of greyhound suffering. This is your chance to help stop the cruelty.
The proposals include compulsory licensing of tracks, vets to be present at all race events, all dogs to be microchipped and injury records to be kept (but not made public). Although these changes are positive, they do nothing to tackle the main problems such as destruction of dogs deemed not suitable for racing (up to 12,000 per year), poor husbandry, injuries and shortage of homes available for retired dogs.
While the industry is focused on making a profit then the welfare of the dogs will always be neglected, sometimes with horrific consequences. Please fill out your details and send the message which urges Defra to outlaw betting on greyhound racing, as it has been in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and much of the USA.
This is the message you will be sending to Peter Hall from the RDPA website link (for easier reading).
Dear Peter Hall,
Thank you very much for allowing the public to respond to Defra`s proposed changes.
As I am sure you are aware, commercial greyhound racing in the UK has long been known for its macabre cruelty towards the dogs which it exploits. I would like to express my concern about Defra`s proposed secondary legislation.
Cruelty factors
A great deal of research in this area has been completed and the following cruelty factors have been identified:
1. Culling the litter
- Owners, breeders, and trainers kill many greyhounds as puppies because they seem unlikely to be successful racers. The majority of greyhounds (75 - 80%) are bred in Ireland where it is impossible to legislate for their welfare.[1]
- There is no restriction of the age or frequency at which bitches are permitted to give birth. As a result they are bred till they drop, producing hundreds of pups in a lifetime.
2. Poor husbandry
- Dogs are kept in the most economical way possible; it is common for trainers to have 150 dogs or more. See http://www.rdpa. org.uk/videoskn2 .html
- Many are kept in cramped conditions for up to 23 hours per day with little or no opportunity for play or to socialise with humans. `Due to the poor sanitary conditions they are kept in, many retired racers suffer from pyoderma or allergic skin diseases. Painful lacerations occur because of poor bedding.` [2]
3. Injuries
- Greyhound racing results in frequent injuries to the dogs, many of which result in dogs being put to sleep - It is thought that more than 4,000 dogs injure themselves while racing annually [3]
- The poor conditions in which greyhounds are bred and the nutrition which they receive in their early years affect bone condition and the likelihood that the dog will experience injury later in life. [1]
- As a result of intensive racing and training micro cracks develop and do not have time to heal prior to the next race. This causes stress fractures to occur. [4]
- Almost all greyhounds show radiological changes of carpal ` wear and tear` at the end of their careers and very often long before [5]
Regarding Defra`s proposal to record dog injury statistics but not making them publicly available (Condition 6: Injury records), I believe the public has the right to know the true, significant, scale of the problem. Based on statistics published on www.greyhound- data.com, it becomes clear that injuries are very common, and constitute a key part of greyhound suffering.
4. Abuse in transportation
- Dogs may be transported for as long as 6 hours per day between the stadium and kennels.
- Transport provision often does not meet EU standards, conditions are extremely cramped with dogs unable to stand fully upright or turn around.
5. Abandonment
- Because of the vast number of dogs retiring from racing every year rehoming through the Retired Greyhound Trust is expensive and places are extremely limited (it is common to have to wait for 6 months to find a space).
- Some dogs often arrive at pounds after being dumped in forests / fields / motorways [6].
- In order to make dogs impossible to trace back to the owner many have been found with their ears cut off (the ear is tattooed with an identity number). [1]
- A new trend is developing which sees retired greyhounds given away by trainers and owners in free ads. As a result dogs are taken in without a home check and in many instances have ended up being kept in terrible conditions or abandoned. [7]
Defra`s proposal to make micro-chipping compulsory as a means of dog identification (Condition 4: Identification of greyhounds) represents a positive step. However, unfortunately it does nothing to take away the motivation for owners and trainers to dispose of dogs (i.e. the fact that dogs become unprofitable) . The APGAW report (page 33) made reference to incidences of microchips being dug out of dogs leaving the dog with a large and open wound. This suggests that, due to the financial pressure to produce a constant stream of fast racing dogs, the commercial greyhound racing industry will always find ways of cheaply disposing of unprofitable dogs.
6. Unnecessary destruction after racing
- Thousands of retired dogs do not make it to a re-homing centre. [1]
- Even the industry backed Donoghue report acknowledges that dogs are not always put down humanely [8]
- There have also been numerous examples of dogs being killed, their ears cut off and their bodies dumped. [9]
7. Special needs pets
- The institutionalisatio n of dogs which takes place from birth to adulthood means that some take a long time to be re-homed (over 12 months); others are entirely unsuitable for adoption. [10]
- These are dogs with behavioural problems, extreme timid-ness or who are simply just so overwhelmed by the world outside the kennel doors that they experience adjustment problems or separation anxiety. [11]
- Retired dogs may have health problems; old untreated injuries and arthritis caused by the intensive racing and training regime which racing greyhounds are put through. [12]
8. Difficulty to rehome other dog breeds
- Dog rehoming charities in the United Kingdom face a massive task in finding homes for all the abandoned and unwanted dogs. 18 stray dogs of other breeds are put to sleep every day just because homes could not be found for them. [13]
- Finding more homes for an additional 9000 greyhounds retiring every year only serves to exacerbate this problem.
References
[1] The Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare (APGAW), The welfare of greyhounds (2007)
[2] Dr. Karen M. Michalski Veterinarian` s guide to the medical care of the retired greyhound
[3] Ongoing analysis by www.rdpa.org. uk
[4] J. L. Tomlin,1 T. J. Lawes,2 G. W. Blunn,3 A. E. Goodship,2 Peter Muir1 Fractographic Examination of Racing Greyhound Central (Navicular) Tarsal Bone Failure Surfaces Using Scanning Electron Microscopy
[5] Identified by vet, David Poulter in his lecture on greyhound injuries (1991)
[6] The Fate of Racing Greyhounds and Working Lurchers in Wales, Welsh APGAW (2003)
[7] http://greytexploit ations.com
[8] Lord Donoghue Independent review of the greyhound industry in Great Britain (2007)
[9] BBC News Greyhound found with ears cut off (2009); and BBC News Greyhound left to die in bin bag (2006)
[10] Based on conversations with rehoming organisations
[11] www.retiredgreyhoun ds.co.uk
[12] David Poulter Greyhound Injuries (1991)
[13] www.dogstrust. org.uk/press_ office/pressrele ases/2008/ straydogsurvey. htm
I feel very strongly that that these cruelty factors are not addressed by your proposed changes.
The unnaceptable treatment of dogs is a direct result of the over-breeding which continues in order to fuel the greyhound racing industry. The need to make a profit takes priority over the welfare of the dogs resulting in an industry which causes the unnecessary and untimely death and mistreatment of thousands of greyhounds. Greyhound racing is currently operating in isolation of the requirements of the Animal Welfare Act and Defra`s proposals do nothing to address these fundamental issues.
The secondary legislation process represents an opportunity to ensure that the full powers of the Animal Welfare Act are enforced. If this is achieved, it would be possible to make greyhound racing animal welfare friendly. Unfortunately, the current proposed changes fall a very long way short of achieving this. They do not address in any way the fundamental problems of over-breeding, frequent injuries and subsequent abandonment and destruction of dogs.
I would like to take this opportunity to urge both Defra and the Government to take stronger action in order to ensure that greyhound racing ceases to be in breach of the Animal Welfare Act. The proposed changes as set out in the Racing Dog Protection Act (see http://www.rdpa. org.uk/Act. html) are, I believe, the only way in which greyhound racing can continue in a way which safeguards the welfare of racing dogs. The RDPA proposes that betting on greyhound racing should be banned. The initiative has been created to adequately protect racing dogs because current animal protection legislation is failing to do so. The RDPA therefore, circumvents the animal protection laws and addresses the root cause of the problem, namely the industry`s requirement to make a profit.
The RDPA is based on a thorough review of the methods of regulation used in different countries around the world. In all the countries which allow betting on dog races, almost identical patterns of animal abuse were found. By banning betting, the requirement to make a profit will be removed. Other countries which have taken similar steps, such as Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, allow greyhound racing to continue but the end result, and therefore impact on the dogs, is vastly different to what we see in the UK. Dogs are kept as pets and raced only as a hobby. As a result they are treated well and only a small number are bred in order to replace dogs which die of natural causes. Whippet racing in the UK has existed for as long as commercial greyhound racing, however betting is not permitted. As a result there is no over-breeding and the dogs are kept at home as pets.
Similar action has also recently been taken in Massachusetts in the USA. On November 4th 2008, on the basis of a ballot, the electorate voted in favour of a ban on betting on greyhound racing. This has been a landmark decision for greyhound welfare lobby groups around the word. It was the first time that a commercially successful greyhound racing industry has been forced to close down through political action. It offers a precedent for future activities of similar campaigns around the world.
Please respond to the public`s growing discontent on this issue and re-draft Defra`s proposed changes to include a ban on betting on racing dogs as set out in the Racing Dog Protection Act.
I would like to thank you in advance for your consideration of this important issue.
Yours sincerely
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